


The Window to the Soul

by shouldgowork



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8928277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldgowork/pseuds/shouldgowork
Summary: Bodhi Rook has lived his short life in wilful ignorance, but there are some events and people that can't be ignored.





	1. Chapter 1

 

1.

‘Last of it’s loaded, Rook. Let’s get out of here soon, no point hanging around.’

Bodhi nodded, listening out for the clunking noise of the cargo bay door under the scuffling sounds of his co-pilot buckling himself in. ‘At least this’ll be a short one.’ He noted with more than a little relief; they could spend days or even weeks hopping from system to system, picking up this and dropping of that, and Areo was very talkative. Not for the first time Bodhi thanked any and every god he’d ever come across that their partners changed on rotation.

‘Yeah just the one round trip isn’t it?’ Areo asked, as if he didn’t have their manifest right in front of him. Bodhi nodded nonetheless.

‘Boring trip, and boring cargo.’

‘Just ammo, I think.’

‘Yeah, plasma cartridges. Must be thousands of them down there. _Tens_ of thousands, maybe.’ He paused, waiting for a reply he didn’t receive.

‘Hey Rook, how many plasma cartridges do you think we’ve transported?’

‘I’ve never thought about it.’ He replied, quite truthfully. Cargo just looked like cargo in the plastic grey boxes that were standard imperial issue.

‘We both started, what, two years ago? Three? Where does the time _go-_ anyway, must have been millions of cartridges. Let’s say three million. Each with, what, five hundred shots? That’s, er-‘

‘That’s one and a half billion blaster shots.’

It was an inconceivably large number, Bodhi thought to himself, shifting uncomfortably as he stared out into the darkness of space. Perhaps, though, not so very large compared to the number of stars in the galaxy, and the number of people who lived amongst them.

‘I like to think of it like that, sometimes.’ Areo droned on, his chest puffing ever so slightly, the reliable early warning system the other cargo pilots had long since noted. ‘Makes me feel like I’m doing my part.’

There it was.

‘Yep.’

‘Well? Don’t _you_ feel like that?’

He nodded; they all nodded. It was far quicker.

‘I mean I _could_ have been a TIE pilot.’

He couldn’t have, as Bodhi well knew; he’d failed the tests, one of a large minority of the cargo pilots. Bodhi himself had simply laughed at the suggestion that he sit the tests himself and explained that he cared to see his first grey hair, if not many more.

‘I _could_ have,’ The man went on, ‘but honestly I think I’m doing more like this.’

‘Yeah.’ He said as shortly as he could, and for once Areo got the hint and stopped talking about his deep and abiding love of the empire. Of course they all supported it, Bodhi included, but there was something deeply embarrassing about fanaticism of this sort. Something distasteful, though while it made Bodhi unhappy, it was merely a source of amusement for the rest of their group.

They flew on in silence for a while, a billion and a half blaster shots weighing on Bodhi’s mind. A billion and a half shots certainly didn’t mean a billion and a half deaths – rebel deaths, of course, and those of other criminals, but still, he must have played his own small part in so many lives ending. He relished it far less than Areo seemed to, but freedom and peace did not come without costs. Even he could see that.

 

2.

‘There’s been a detour added to your route. It should only add on a day or so.’ The Stormtrooper intoned. Bodhi inwardly cursed as he saw his plans for the next few days toppling like dominoes, the date he’d have to stand up, the old friends he wouldn’t meet in a bar, the gift he wouldn’t be able to send home in time for his father’s birthday. His father’s first birthday, Bodhi remembered, since his mother had died, guilt pooling in his stomach, and he ground his teeth in mutinous silence.

His anger dissolved into something horribly close to guilt when the reason for the detour was dragged out towards the cargo ship, a Stormtrooper clutching each arm.

‘She's to be questioned in facility three. You know where it is.’

He did indeed know. This was not the first time. He tried very hard not to look at her face though he could feel her rage radiating out into the space between them. Bodhi’s face grew warm and he felt a vicious stab of anger at her; for existing, for causing so much trouble. For making him feel so bad.

‘ _Why do you have to act like this? Why can’t you just be? Just make the best of it? No one’s life is perfect’_ He wanted to take her by the shoulders and scream this at her.

Not, he hastily reminded himself, that the empire is bad to live under. It’s _mostly_ good, and surely that’s good enough when it has so many worlds, so many billions of people, to manage and keep secure. It’s never very clear to him, or anyone else he knows from the Core Worlds, what exactly the rebels are so angry about.

‘There’s space in the cargo hold for the three of you. We can leave whenever you’re ready.’ He said, flinching from the spit she directed at him quite expertly as she was marched past.

‘ _It’s not my fault you’re here, it’s your fault. You have chosen this.’_ He thought to himself, as he did every time, though it was very little consolation and his chest still felt hollow.

 

3.

Bodhi had been excited to be routed to Eadu for the first time, new locations being one of the few possible excitements in cargo transportation. His anticipation had lasted exactly until he’d seen the place, dimly, through an endless curtain of rain and sleet. His heart sank further still at the grey, craggy wasteland as he remembered they had to wait until the next day to leave.

‘I’d almost rather be waiting around on Mustafar. At least it’s warm there.’ His co-pilot said gloomily as they looked for the dim landing lights to guide them in.

‘You been here before, Decker?’ Bodhi asked, hoping to hear that there was a warren of cheap and excellent cantinas and shows burrowed beneath the surface.

‘Nope. But I’ve heard a couple of the guys mention it. There’s nothing here at all, just the research facility, or whatever it is. Hope you brought your dejarik board. Not that I have a chance of winning.’

‘We’re so far into the Outer Rim, and this place is a shithole. Wonder what they’re doing out all the way out here.’ Bodhi wondered idly.

‘No idea, but it’s probably not worth your life to seek a peak in the cargo to find out.’ She replied with a loud guffaw. He couldn’t quite hide a grimace at her crassness, after all, a couple of cargo pilots had recently been executed for just such a crime. The crime of looking. He could easily believe the cargo had been very important and highly secret, and of course they were always worried about rebels infiltrating, an ever-growing concern, but _killing_ them? He hesitated, and thought again of his comfortable childhood, of the plans he was making for his own quiet future, filled with petty, breakfast-time squabbling and a small horde of children to get underfoot, and these beat down his momentary distaste easily enough. After all, _he_ wasn’t going to be stupid enough to directly contravene the rules. If anyone else was, that was their business.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ He said, with a laugh as they touched down on the surface.

The place was every bit as dull as promised, endless acres of grey, windowless walls, with floors and ceilings in complimentary shades of beige, which charmingly offset the staff’s grey uniforms. Bodhi could only assume the decorator had been colour blind. They had been fed on arrival (a virtuous and entirely unappealing nutritional mush which was, to his bemusement, also grey), and were now allowed to wander at liberty through the common parts of the facility, which turned out to be precisely four long, winding corridors of the place. With no other options they’d taken the opportunity to pace the grey warren allowed to them.

This was how thy came across it.

‘No, _please_ , I wasn’t- it wasn’t how it looked.’ Said a very small voice from somewhere nearby. Bodhi didn’t want to look but somehow couldn’t stop himself from quietly approaching, stopping just outside the room, and peeping inside, with Decker just behind. The voice belonged to a child, seemingly from the local population, in the same grey uniform he’d seen on everyone else. A Stormtrooper held them by the collar. Dotted around the room, at various tables and sets of apparatus, were nearly ten men, all stood as still as statues.

‘You were caught thieving. The rules are clear.’

‘I think Director Krennic made it clear that those are somewhat special measures, to be applied in the case of espionage, not the pilfering of medical supplies.’ Said one of the group, seemingly a little braver than the rest. The child’s eyes filled with hope but Bodhi’s guts already twisted. Stormtroopers were not a nuanced group.  

‘The rules leave no room for interpretation.’

‘Well, the brat’s for it.’ Decker whispered into his ear.

Bodhi made the slightest move forward, in the knowledge that he had to intervene. He faltered almost immediately. What exactly was he meant to do? He was just one person, and one who’d blundered into the end of whatever was happening.  After all, there was the possibility the Stormtrooper was in the right. Did he know enough to intercede? Would it even be right to get involved? This wasn’t anything to do with him, after all.

As Bodhi quickly pondered these questions, the intercessor opened his mouth to speak again but before he’d even drawn breath the child had been shot through the stomach with a blaster, and had fallen to the rapidly reddening floor with squeals of pain. Bodhi’s doubts melted away immediately as he stood watching the victim of his inaction writhing his last few moments away.

The small crowd looked this way and that, some at the ceiling, others at the floor, still more at their own hands or feet, but all steadfastly insisted with every fibre of their being that this child was not bleeding to death in front of them. Bodhi glanced back at Decker as she watched impassively, which was somehow even worse. His throat felt as if it was about to burst, his body coursing with adrenaline he could have used to rush forward and snatch the child away. Adrenaline that now had no outlet but to make his fingertips tingle, as he stood in the shadows and did nothing. He felt as if he were about to explode, and as if he were about to faint, all at once, as he tried to process the insanity of what he had just witnessed. As he tried to understand the unfazed expressions all around him, as if this were totally normal.

‘ _It is totally normal. This is what they do. Fuck, it’s what I do too. I’m way past one and a half billion by now.’_ He looked at the blank faces in front and behind and, for the first time in his life, he was truly afraid, feeling the weight of their unconcern crushing him. He wondered if he’d suddenly gone mad, for wanting to vomit at what was apparently invisible to those around him. Then he wondered if he’d _always_ been mad, for there was no other explanation for how blind he’d been to the truth. Either way, he’d done nothing, and he hated himself for that.

Still full of nervous energy, his eyes darted this way and that. For a second they caught those of the intercessor, whose own expression changed from glass to fire. The change lasted only the time it would take to blink, but in that moment Bodhi seemed to look into the man’s very soul and to have his own laid bare too, to judge from the very slight widening of the other man’s eyes. For this brief moment nothing else seemed to exist, except their shared outrage, and he clung to this solidarity for dear life. It brought him back to his senses enough to realise that Decker had walked off in the meantime. He wondered if she’d had the decency to wait until the child was fully dead.

‘The Director will hear of your interference, Erso.’ The Stormtrooper said.

‘By all means. And I will explain to him I was merely trying to follow his own orders as faithfully as I can. Now excuse me, I will get a clean-up crew.’ He replied with a slight deferential nod, stepping around the child’s body pointedly to get to the door. The door that Bodhi was currently lurking at. The man walked past him with the slightest motion of his head that Bodhi should follow, which he did, padding silently next to him until they had turned another corner, where he stopped and turned to face Bodhi properly, appraisingly.

‘I am Galen Erso.’ He said eventually, evidently having made a judgement in Bodhi’s favour.

‘Bodhi Rook.’ He replied, with the same serious tone as the other man, as if a solemn vow had just been made on either side. He supposed that in a way it had.

‘You are a cargo pilot?’ He asked, noting the patch on Bodhi’s arm. He nodded in reply. ‘I will seek you out on your next trip.’ Erso said and walked off without waiting for a reply.

Bodhi watched his retreating back with equal measures of hope and terror, for what and of what he could not say exactly.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

He’s such a naïve boy, Galen thinks to himself. He’s perfect.

He cannot help but blush at how predatory his words are, but it’s true. This is exactly the opportunity he’s been looking for. And it’s not a criticism, far from it; the boy’s arrival is a blessing and not a moment too soon. Nevertheless, it will be a few weeks until he returns, and Galen curses the fact that he can’t risk any sort of purposeful communication, consoling himself with idle fantasies of seeing Jyn again – not, of course that that is why he’s doing this, though it is this thought alone that has kept him sane through the darkest days. Impatience gets the better of him, and he sneaks a look at the upcoming flight manifestos, burns through supplies to speed up the shipment, finally ensnaring his prey a little over a month later, grabbing hold of an opportune moment, when everyone’s attention is turned to the fire alarm he has rigged to go off, to steer the pilot towards his rooms and sit him down with a strong drink, to do what must be done.

Galen stared at the figure across from him, nervous fingers toying with the glass, eyes darting from side to side though the room is empty aside from them. Galen opened his mouth, closed it again, unsure of what to say; he had thought of many things, encouraging, convincing, pleading things, flatteries and vague threats, but had not thought of any way to start them, all the more difficult when faced with this living, breathing human and not the dark ceiling that played host to his silent, night time rehearsals.  

‘I tried to join.’ Bodhi blurted out as Galen struggled with himself.

‘Huh?’ Galen asked a little dumbly.

‘The rebels, that is. After…’ Bodhi lapsed back into pained silence, the memory of that poor child clearly still fresh these several weeks later, even after Galen himself has forgotten who exactly it was, consigned it to the ever-growing roster of victims he keeps in his head. Galen found himself moved, so distracted by this unexpected, half-forgotten sensation and the unexpected prick of tears in his eyes that he couldn’t find any words to say. Kindness, it seemed to him then, was far more precious and rare than every Khyber crystal in the galaxy.

‘And yet you’re here.’ He replied eventually.

‘I… I couldn’t work out how. Couldn’t find them anywhere.’ Bodhi said very sheepishly. ‘You always hear of them, lurking about, but when it came to it… I went into a couple of dodgy cantinas in a few places on my cargo route. Didn’t get anything but a black eye for staring too much at someone. He seemed like he could be a rebel. He looked mean.’ He rambled on, finishing weakly, and now Galen could see the last remnants of bruising on his face, his lips twitching into a smile.  Bodhi’s actions are ridiculous, and endearing, he thought to himself.  They’re also bold, some other part of his mind reminded him sternly, and that, when all’s said and done, was what the boy is here for. Now was the time to strike at his good nature, to tell him that this child is only the start.

‘So, Bodhi, tell me about yourself.’ He found himself saying instead.

‘Oh, well, not much to tell. Boring life, really. Got my work, got my friends.’

‘Family?’ He continued, strangely curious to know more about this boy’s life, as if he wanted to torture himself with what this boy would be doing if he hadn’t had the misfortune to cross paths with Galen.

‘My father. No one else.’ He said.

‘I suppose you are a bit young for a family of your own.’ Galen replied, a little self-consciously.

‘You had a family.’ Bodhi stated. At Galen’s obvious surprise he stammered and looked back down. ‘You seem sad.’ He offered by way of explanation and his compassion twisted a knife in Galen’s stomach. Could he really do this?

‘M- My father. If I- I mean, would he get in trouble? If I’m talking to you?’ The boy asked suddenly, his eyes widening with fear, fidgeting, if possible, even more than before. Galen opened his mouth with no idea of what he was going to say, for once grateful to hear a knock at his door. In a swift, surely practiced, movement he was out of his chair and across the room. Within two heartbeats he had gently pushed Bodhi into a small storage room immediately behind him, picked up Bodhi’s glass, pretending to fill it as Krennic entered, and offered it to him. Covering his mouth with his hands, Bodhi stood stock still in his hiding place and listened.

‘Director.’

‘Erso.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘What you can always do.’ The other man replied, a chill running down Bodhi’s spine despite his friendly tone. Galen laughed, a small strangled noise.

‘I am working as fast as I can. It’s nearly done.’

‘You said that two weeks ago.’

‘It was true two weeks ago, and it is even truer now.’

A small rushing noise followed by the stinging sound of skin on skin.

‘This is no laughing matter.’

‘My apologies, Director.’ Galen replied, the same forced, pleasant tone in his voice as before.

‘I don’t want apologies, I want the fucking Death Star operational.’ The director hissed. ‘If it’s not ready soon, I may start culling your research team. The most useless members first. You can watch.’

‘Whatever you think best.’ Galen replied, an edge creeping into his voice, ‘Though I assure you it is almost complete.

‘It had better be, for your sake.’

A glass clinked heavily and the door closed again. Bodhi dared to emerge, and he saw Galen sat in the chair, clutching his head in his hands, looking as if he were about to shatter like glass. He crept over and placed a hand lightly on Galen’s head.

‘What are they doing to you?’ He asked, and Galen nearly drowned right then and there in the oceans of concern and sympathy in the boy’s eyes. For a moment, wild impulse nearly overwhelmed him, to howl, to weep, to tell this boy of the many wrongs that life has done him, to unburden himself of the grief and loneliness that have driven him for over a decade, to stow Bodhi away forever in these rooms and keep him safe, from the empire and the rebels and what either of them would ask him to do, or perhaps they could simply leave. They’re already in the Outer Rim, if they kept going-

He regained himself almost immediately, but the damage had been done, and his heart almost hurt with what was impossible, and with what circumstances were forcing him to do.

‘What they are doing to me is unimportant.’ He said, looking straight in front of him. ‘It is what I am doing, what they are _making_ me do, that matters.’ He launched himself, ramblingly, almost incoherently, into the bare bones of the story, a far cry from the versions he had rehearsed.

‘I need time to think.’ Bodhi says, some time later, by which point he was three drinks worse off and sitting on the floor in shock at this evil contraption, his fists still clenched and his head shaking in disbelief. Galen watched him, this vision of outrage sitting hunched on his floor. He’s a fledgling on the edge of a nest, he’s tinder that just needs a spark. But is Galen here spark or arsonist? It doesn’t matter, he realised sadly. It _can’t_ matter. He’s run out of time.

‘What time, Bodhi? That thing is nearly operational. What must be done, must be done _now_. There is no one else. It’s a miracle you turned up when you did. I’m sure it is the Force at work.’ He said a little heatedly, not quite a lie. Lyra would certainly have thought so and he had far too much time to regret every occasion on which he didn’t listen to her.

‘But my father-’

‘-I know.’ Galen replied, thinking of his dead wife, his wandering child, the friends and the life lost to him forever. ‘I _know._ It’s dangerous. I cannot make you do anything. I can only tell you this. I don’t know what will happen to him if you act. But I _do_ know what will happen if the Death Star is not destroyed. We will all be enslaved, or die, your father included. But you have a choice. You can just leave this room, I won’t stop you. You can fly away, and not look back. We can pretend this didn't happen.’

Bodhi laughed at this, though there was little enough mirth to it. ‘I can’t just leave. I have to _do_ something. It’s not right.’

_‘I knew you’d say that.’_ Galen thought to himself, feeling a little nauseous.

‘You’re a good man, Rook.’ He said, and the sheepish smile these words earned him only made him hate himself even more.

Bodhi left some time later with the tiny, inconspicuous thing in his pocket, feeling his blood course unpleasantly through the fingers that clutched at it. They will fly back to base the next morning. He’ll need to stay a day or two to give his father a head start on the message he’ll send, discreetly, the moment they’ve gotten back. Perhaps his father will be alright. Perhaps he himself will make it through this, and Galen too. Perhaps they’ll all be on the other side of this one day, in a better world, and this will be nothing but a memory. It’s a faint hope, but it burns resolutely in his heart nonetheless.


End file.
